


Desper8 Youth, 8loodthirsty 8a8es

by anthrop



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, F/M, Gen, Gore, I had to Google a lot of worrying things to write this, IN SPACE!, Latin and Spanish were also gently abused for starship names, Spaceships, Vriska's mouth deserves a warning too, blatant mangling of English to make troll career titles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 13:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthrop/pseuds/anthrop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vriska Serket is a brash, bombastic, and blatantly terrible example of a blueblooded troll. She is nothing like you; she is everything you aren’t.</p><p>Two different ways of saying it, but only one of them makes you feel good about yourself. </p><p>(Serkets--in--SPACE!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desper8 Youth, 8loodthirsty 8a8es

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HarpGuy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarpGuy/gifts).



> My giftee requested the Scorpio ladies living as a family. This--this is not that fic. I really should have just gone with my murderous arachne Serkets Supernaturalstuck idea instead, whoops. I really wanted to write trollfic though, so oh well.
> 
> Yes, the wordcount was intentional. You may all laugh freely now!
> 
> Title taken from the TV on the Radio album _Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes_.

The wind is a-whippin’ through the open doors

Speakin’ of the sea and the rolling waves

Maybe there’s a ship at the bottom now

Or struggling on the surface with a cry for help

Wish I could forget and let the years go by

Wish I could escape from my dreams of you

-          Katzenjammer, “To the Sea”

 

=

 

Trierarchorphaner Eridan Ampora, sole caretaker of Gl'bgolyb, Emissary of the Horrorterrors and Her Imperious Condescension's lusus, is laying in two pieces on your operating slab, his royal violet entrails sprawled in a tangled spill between his lowermost ribs and the broad bowl of his hipbones in a manner that could nearly be considered artistic.

To clarify-- Eridan Ampora, the one troll standing between the Vast Glub and your entire species' extinction--is laying on your operating slab with most of his inner organs determined to become his outer organs, and making respectable progress of it. His expression is mostly irritated with a side dish of mild discomfort.

"I ain't into this kind of spadeplay, Vris," he says, conversationally.

A ghost of familiarity makes you shiver, but you let it pass you by. It’s probably nothing more than a backwash of his own mistaken recognition of you. It's well-known that seadwellers are notoriously bad at keeping their emotions in check. "My Lord," you say, your back ramrod straight, hands clasped neatly together, "If you will allow my assistants and I to aid you, there is a very good chance we will be able to save your lowermost motor functions--"

He chuckles and you stop talking. Behind your cool mask of professionalism you are very slightly horrified by the jiggle of his secondary intestinal tract.

" _Cod_ , you're determined to play this one through, aren't you?" He sighs, a big huff of air that blows his curled, sweat-damp hair out of his eyes. His gill slits slap together with a tell-tale _glub_ of impatience. "Well I ain't sayin' I don't appreciate the effort here, Vris, an' in different circumstances I might even be so inclined as to play along, but I think you're forgetting the clock is tickin'. For _all_ a us, not just the mouth breathers still kickin' around out there." He peers at you through thick-lensed glasses. "Don't you got a lot a work to do?"

"W-well certainly, my Lord, but as you are both the only seadweller currently on board _and_ in rather dire need of medical care, you take precedence over those lower on the hemo--"

"On board?" Lord Ampora hauls his torso up onto his elbows with a distressingly wet squelch of soft tissue. He waves you away when you try to push him back down. "Where are we?"

You swallow down frustration. "You are on HIC Bauilus, largest mediship of the Imperial Fleet and central schoolfeeding hub for general and specialized schools of mediterrorism."

He blinks at you. " _Seriously_ Vris? I gotta say, this scenario you've cooked up ain’t all that good here. I mean, _you_ playing at bein' a _mediterrorist_ is about as believable as me bein', I dunno, a _rustblood_." He laughs, dissolving into an ugly bout of coughing that splashes violet down his chin.

"Lord Ampora," you say, too exasperated to keep the irritation from your voice, “you have me mistaken for someone else."

Still coughing weakly, he grins, jaw hanging loose and his big, slightly bulgy seadweller eyes shiny with pain. "Oh yeah? An' who're _you_ supposed to be?"

You draw yourself up to your full height, hands clasped again. "I am Head Surgetactician Aranea Serket, my Lord, and I _must_ insist you allow my assistants and me to treat you."

His grin fades. He slumps into himself. Even his decorative facial fins slouch. "Aw s _hell_ ," he says, and turns his head away from you.

 

=

 

Trierarchorphaner Eridan Ampora continues to refuse treatment. He laughed when you offered him something to at least ease his pain, shouted when you tried to wipe his chin, and has since flirted with every single person who has come to gawp at the troll who can still wiggle his toes when there is a foot of space between his second and third lumbar vertebrae.

Most of the information you glean from Lord Ampora's bioinformational scan is either common knowledge or too corrupt to be of any use. You do succeed in pulling up a partial list of emergency contacts--a list of one. His kismesis is listed only under an eight-lettered title-- _very_ old-fashioned, how curious!--of Araignée. Beside that is the name of the starship they are currently assigned to, along with its last known coordinates.

"Reconciliarse?" A strange name, certainly not a Fleet ship. On the console at your elbow you press a button, alerting Bauilus' helmsman. "Contact starship Reconciliarse; ensure one Araignée is notified of His Lordship's current location and refusal of medical attention."

Bauilus chitters on the local intercom as an acknowledgement. A moment passes before it replies. "Notified. Salvor-class starship Reconciliarse and Captain Araignée en route. Arrival in approximately sixteen Alternian hours."

"A _salvor_ -class? Is that correct?"

"Affirmative."

"Huh." You lean back in your administrationblock chair, tapping your chin. "Now what could the kismesis of the second most powerful troll alive be doing captaining a salvaging barge?"

"I don't know, Ma'am. Shall I inquire?"

"What? Oh, no, disregard. Alert me when the Reconciliarse has docked."

"Yes, Ma'am."

The helmsman Bauilus returns to its duties and--after pouring yourself another pod of bitter coffee--you return to yours. But as you work through the small tower of files on your desk in need of reviewing and your cobalt signature, worry niggles in the back of your pan. You do your best to ignore it as, for the time being at least, there is nothing more you can do. Lord Ampora refuses treatment, and the only troll with the legal right to overrule him is still hours away.

Again, that funny little whisper of déjà vu washes over you. It’s gone by the time you finish your coffee.

 

=

 

You dream of home sometimes, of sweeps past when things were simpler. Quieter.  These dreams are comforting ones--the pink and teal forest of your wigglerhood stretching for miles around you; dappled moonslight playing fantastic shapes across the tinted windows of your treehive; the soft noises of antlered hoofbeasts treading through the underbrush; the thrashing panic of young trolls as you marched them to your lusus' vast web.

A mediterrorist must be fluent in the art of emotional detachment, and that was a skill you mastered when you were still growing into your opposable thumbs.

In this dream you dress yourself as six sweeps old again, roasting grubloaf over an open campfire under the stars. Your lusus sleeps behind you, vast and white, twitching as she dreams. What do lusii dream of, you wonder, and laugh at yourself.

The dream is foggy, a replay of many similar nights during the dim seasons of your wigglerhood. It is always pleasant to dream of grass tickling your bare legs when you cannot recall the feel of it when you are awake.  It’s been a long time since you’ve been planetside.

"How funny," a voice says, breaking your reverie as starkly as a banged horn.

You are on your feet, toes curling in the dirt--what a delicious feeling!--in a flash. The Octet bloom from your specibus, a burst of bright blue and a stink of ozone. “Who’s there?” you demand, peering out past the fire and into the dark.

A female's--an _adult_ female's--smoky chuckle is your reply. You waste not a second more, touch your temple and throw out a vicious slash of psychic energy, enough to short circuit a pan into unconsciousness.

The invader chuckles again. "That tickled."

Again you growl, "Who's there?"

"Trust me when I say that if I wanted to hurt you, you would already be squealing like a stuck oinkbeast," the voice says. "Now put down those silly old things; I'd like to keep this civil."

"Show yourself and I might not set my lusus after you," you retort.

"Oh, she would _never_ hurt me." A twig snaps underfoot. A tall, tall woman steps into the reach of the flickering firelight, all long tangled hair and sharp angles. The blue of her coat is the same exact blue of your shirt. Her nose is your nose. Her fangs are your fangs. But it is the sun-red eye and glint of metal knuckles perched on her hip that leads you to one name and one name only.

" _Mindfang?_ "

"That would be _Marquise_ Mindfang, if you please," she says, and you have never come close to imagining your ancestor sounding _huffy_ but there it is all the same.

"Oh, um, sorry." You can't stop staring. She is older than you, scars and laugh lines where your skin is still clean. There are streaks of ash gray in her long, long hair, her horns are badly notched, but despite the way she carries herself--so different than you, so confident!--she is your _twin_. She is you in two hundred sweeps. You are her at a scant thirty. "But--how?"

Her smile has a crooked edge to it that your own lacks. "Are you really asking that in a _dream?_ "

"Well--" Where has your twitcher run off to? Why can't you form one damn sentence?

"Put the Octet away, Aranea. Sit."

You lower your hands, return your dice--her dice?--to your specibus. Mindfang strides across the camp, past the fire, past you, straight to the high white wall of your lusus' abdomen. She places her hand flat against the hard carapace. Your lusus' pedipalps twitch, but she remains otherwise deep asleep. "How funny," your ancestor says again. Her face is hidden, but her tone is…sad?

"What is?"

"How some things never change." Her hand falls, and she turns on her heel to face you. "But never mind that. Time is short. There is much to be done."

"What?"

The Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, gambligant scourge of the ancient seas, frowns down at you, disappointment crinkling her brow, and you want to sink into the ground and just _die_. "I had heard you were more eloquent than this, but I guess that just goes to show one mustn't believe everything one hears on the clustered fruit-bearing climbing plant."

"I-I apologize, Marquise." You duck your head to hide the splash of blue warming your cheekbones.

"I forgive you." Her one eye shines with mirth. "Aranea, I come with a message out of the kindness of my blood pusher and no little sense of self-preservation. Are you prepared to hear it?”

“Y-yes.”

"Wake up."

You blink. "That's it? Marquise?"

She grins. "Of course! Very pithy, not my usual style at all, but circumstances demand brevity." She _tsks_ , as if circumstances really ought to know better when dealing with somebody like her. You can't help but agree, all things considering.

"Marquise, Ma'am, I don't understand. I know that I'm asleep right now."

"Are you so sure, Aranea?" Her smile widens whenever she says your name, like there's a joke between the second and third A you can’t hear. "Times are not what they seem, darling dear of my blood. It would not do to trust your eyes."

"But--"

Her eyes fill your vision as her palm comes down to touch your crown. "Rise and shine, Aranea."

 

=

 

You wake to the sound of klaxon bells, blood pusher thundering against your ribs. It takes scarcely a minute to hoist yourself from your recooperacoon, slough off warm sopor and bundle yourself into your outer robe before someone pounds at your door. You jump even though you knew it was coming, helpless but to imagine a long list of reasons the alarm might have sounded, each one worse than the last.

When you thumb the bioscan panel to allow the door to slide open, you're expecting a fellow instructor or perhaps another member of the crew, but instead a shivering trainee with right-angle horns and the uniform of a slicerintern looks up at you with bulging green eyes.

“What’s happened?” you ask tersely, slicking your sopor-wet hair off your forehead. There is, of course, not a trace of a tremble to your arm.

“Ma’am!” He says, saluting as if his life depends on it. “Anesthesigarroter Tallom sent me!”

“How nice of him.” Oh, schoolfeeders. One must remember to exercise patience with them. “Why has the alarm been sounded?”

“Ma’am, Lord Trierarchorphaner Ampora has gone missing, Ma’am!”

“Trainee, you are not offering me a grubloaf sandwich. Do not use a simplified form of the feminine address as bread.”

“S-sorry, Ma’am.”

“Also, you may stop saluting me.”

His rigid hand drops like a stone to his side. Your quivering little troll looks ready to wet his badly ironed uniform. “I--“

“Now, are you aware of Lord Ampora’s current status?”

The trainee’s eyes bulge farther. “H-he is currently in the nautical intensive care ward, but I don’t--“

You hold up your hand. He flinches and falls silent. “Lord Ampora was brought to us _bisected_ at the waist. He is completely incapable of walking under his own power, let alone vanish into thin air on a ship full of security cameras and mediterrorists.” To your own ears, your voice sounds waspish, but you’re having a hard time blinking away the afterimage of your ancestor’s burnt-out eye. There is a shiver to your skin you cannot shake, that same whisper of uncertainty. You don’t feel the least bit of remorse for snapping at some quivering little troll fresh off the home planet.

“Never mind.” You brush past him, calling over your shoulder, “Return to your quarters, trainee.”

“Y-yes, Ma’am,” he replies weakly. The sound of his scurrying boots fades quickly under the blare of the alarms.

 

=

 

In the nautical intensive care ward, everyone and everything in sight is haywire.  Mediterrorists flail in various states of panic. Someone has spilled a tray of tiny power tools on the floor and left them there to buzz impotently. Absolutely nothing productive is being accomplished, except perhaps a lot of noise.

A pan-ache is growing steadily behind your seven-pupiled eye. You decide enough is enough and touch claws to temple. To the eight other trolls in the bay with you, you broadcast a wave of serenity--or at least the closest to serenity you can achieve with sopor drying in itchy clumps against your scalp.  Their panic wanes immediately. All eyes turn to you. After a beat they hastily salute you with various levels of military bearing.

Dropping your hand, you say aloud, “Helmsman?”

The cleverly hidden speakers crackle to life. “Yes, Surgetactician Serket?”

“ _Please_ silence the alarms.”

The racket ceases immediately, leaving only a high ringing in your sponge clots. “Much better. Now,” you stare down at the group of greensblood staff, “can someone ensure me that the schoolfeeder who dragged me from my coon was out of his pan?”

A jadeblood with curlicue horns steps forward. “Ah, Angiohewer Reswot.” You smile as you return her salute. “Where has our patient gone? I see his slab is conspicuously lacking in both his upper and lower portions, although the puddle he left behind is quite an attractive shape.”

Reswot shrugs, spreading her empty hands. “What can I say? He vanished as well as any wraith would have. Nothing on the security feeds show him moving from his slab. He has had no visitors. There isn’t a trace of his blood on anything else, and not a single one of the alarms tripped.”

You can’t help the sarcastic raise of your eyebrow. “And so you turned them on yourself to compensate?”

She grimaces. “No, that was Rendernurse Stemyt, a recent transfer from HIC Viridis. He has since been dealt with accordingly.”

You resist the urge to pinch your cartilage bump. “You realize the implications of all this.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“You understand how important Lord Ampora is?” Some traitorous bit of you wants to laugh when you say that. You blame the sheen of sopor drying on your skin.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Have you begun a search of the ship?”

“We ran a full scan. There is no sign of him onboard.”

The speakers crackle again. “Surgetactician Serket?”

“What _now?_ ”

“The Reconciliarse is prepping to dock in bay eight.”

“Of _course_ it is.” You take your glasses off to rub your dry eyes. “Inform Araignée that I will meet them there as soon as I can. As for all of _you_ \--“ you wave your hand at the trolls spread before you, “you will rouse every free crewmember on deck. Collect the older trainees as well if need be. Bauilus is a big ship with a lot of niches to hide a corpse.”

Reswot waves for your attention as your make to leave. “What are you asking of us, exactly?”

God help you. “Let it be you’re as tired as I am and not actually this pandead, Angiohewer.” You clap your hands to startle their attentions, waiting for the echo to fade before speaking. “I want a physical search done immediately. Assume the scanners are malfunctioning, damaged or even tampered with. I want oculars and fronds on every inch of Bauilus. I want Bauilus to feel like she’s been through a deep tissue body fondle at a night spa with the thoroughness of this search. Is that clear?”

Hasty saluting. “Yes Ma’am!”

“Good.” You smile again, hoping it’s more convincing than it feels. “We’ll be fine so long as not a word of this is breathed on the transmitter feeds. _Do_ ensure no word is breathed, Angiohewer Reswot. I’m putting you in charge.”

She nods firmly. “Understood.”

“Excellent.” Satisfied and in need of a light speed-quick cleaning in the ablution trap, you turn on your heel and return to your block.

After all, you have a seadweller’s kismesis to coddle.

 

=

 

God you’re bored!!!!!!!!

You have been sprawling about in various poses of boredom throughout your ship nestled in the eighth bay (farthest from the chow hall, according to the midblood who asked for your biosignature, but how could you resist?) for what _has_ to have been forever. Your roboarm’s built-in time keeping device says it’s only been twenty minutes, but that is exactly nineteen more minutes than you have ever tolerated waiting in your whole _life_.

To repeat, you are _boooooooored_.

Your digestive sac growls, and that’s the final straw for you. You roll yourself off the upholstered reclining seat and reach for your red leather boots. “Hey Longhorns!”

“Yes, Vriska?” Ugh, your new respiteblock speakers are starting to fritz already. Going to have to get that fixed or the buzzing is _guaranteed_ to drive you shithive maggots.

I’m bailing for some grub, want anything?”

“That dysteletechnician made it pretty clear, that he didn’t want you going anywhere.”

You laugh. “Since when do I follow orders?”

“Ha, that is true. Bring me back some curryworms if they have them?”

“Doubt anybody on this lameass ship’s got the _globes_ for curryworms, but yeah, sure.”

“Vriska? Don’t you uh, think you should put a shirt on before you leave?”

You look down, hand up to thumb the external door open. “Do I have to?”

“Well, they probably have dress codes or, something? At least, they probably won’t like you walking around their nice clean starship, topless.”

“ _You_ like it when I walk around topless.”

“Ha, but that would imply, I am not a nice clean starship.”

“Yeah right, wouldn’t want people to think that!” You grab your nearest jacket and slip it over your shoulders. “See ya ‘round,” you say, and skim down the airstairs before he can reply.

As soon as you step through the sliding pneumatic door to the central corridor you have to hop out of the way of a passing group of schoolfeeders. Marching! They actually have these dirtlickers _marching!_ On a _starship!_ You are appalled and feel very nearly sorry for the wane-faced midbloods in their plain trainee uniforms, but then you remember they did this to themselves. Their bad for not skipping out on military detail and hightailing it for the cartograbutcher route like you did!

Of course, your stupid dumb matesprit likes to remind you that the only reason you’re not kicking ass in the intelarsonists field is because you left to avoid a culling sentence. Whatever! It’s not _your_ fault everybody else is so hung up about stupid shit like _safety codes_ and _legality issues_ and _misuse of psychic energies_. You left half a sweep into your schoolfeeding on HIC Illaturos and haven’t looked back since.

Near the fourth docking bay you spy some midbloods in pristine operating scrubs stare openly at you. Rude! They’re acting like they’ve never seen a pair of vestigial fatty tissue nourishment glands before! Some mediship _this_ is turning out to be. Nothing but prudes as far as you can see! You imagine the looks you would have gotten if you hadn’t worn a jacket and cackle.

A gangly tealblood steps out of an ascending and descending floor shaft in the inner wall not five feet from you, engrossed in something on his datascreen. “Hey!” You wave, and his oculars just about pop out of his sockets when he lays them on you. You place your hand on your hip, shifting the tattered hem of your jacket which gives him an excellent clear view of your thorax. This suits you _just_ fine. “Hey,” you say again, “Who’s a troll got to cull to get some directions to the chow hall around here?”

His mouth works uselessly. Rolling your eye, you snap your fingers in his face. “C’mon dude, I ain’t got all sweep now.”

“Uh--“ he manages at last. “Y-you’ll want to take the floor shaft to the middle deck. It’s nothing but hangars and storage blocks down here.”

“Now was that so hard?” You flip your hair over your shoulder and laugh. “Wanna join me? I could use some entertainment on this _snoozefest_ of a starship.”

“It--um, I shouldn’t--“

“Lady Araignée, I presume?”

“ _Ugh_ ,” you groan, turning to face the sound of incoming heels, “Don’t start with that bullshit highblood pander--what the fuck‽”

The troll who interrupted your flirting before you could really get started is _you_. She is you--short-haired, scar-free, two-eyed, two-armed _you_. Her eyebrows rise above white-framed glasses. “Oh my,” she murmurs, “Well that would explain a number of things!” Her tucked-away smirk is no less than eight levels of fussy fang material.

You suddenly understand jack shit.

 

=

 

You decide within ten minutes of listening to this troll--who looks like you and Kanaya got concupiscent with a solid gold filial pail-- is a grade A bitch. Turns out your stick-up-her-ass twin doesn’t just _look_ like a fussy fanged schoolfeeder, she is the _head surgetactician_  fussy fanged schoolfeeder of this whole damn mediship. She just about trollhandled you into an offshoot corridor and immediately regaled you with all the ins and outs of being her. She nearly asked you breathless questions such as, “You haven’t run into many people, have you?” and “Your horns are dramatically modified, did you change the shape as well? No? Well this would explain why Lord Ampora thought I was you, ha ha ha!” She chatters on and on with the speed and subtlety of a groin shot. She informs you--with no small amount of pride in her voice--that she is the troll who oversees the final practical application tests for the graduating trainees, and as such has earned the slightly illicit knickname among them of _Her Honorable Tyranny_. She is also both a prodigy and trendsetter in the fields of mediterrorism, but she does her due best to not let it go to her pan, or she assures you.

Her name is Aranea Serket, and she is apparently kind of a big deal.

“WOW,” you say loudly once you’ve heard enough nook rubbing to last the next twenty sweeps or so of your life. “You just don’t know when to shut up, do you?”

She immediately stiffens. “I apologize, Lady Araignée, I didn’t mean to offend y--“

“Vriska.”

“Excuse me?”

You hold out your robohand. “My _name_ is Vriska Serket, and I don’t give a flying fuck who you are. I just want to know where my fish-for-brains kismesis is.”

She clears her throat and doesn’t touch your hand. _Big_ tell for a _big_ lie. “As I said before, Lord Ampora is currently in our nautical intensive care ward and is unable to have visitors.” She smiles like you just told a hilarious joke. “ _Surely_ your hatchname isn’t Serket, is it?”

“Of course it is!” You drop your unshaken hand. Squeamish? Nah, not if she’s a surgetactician. You grin, and laugh when her eyes widen. God she has such an easy face to read! You wonder if you were ever that much of an unlocked husktop as a wiggler. Tossing your hair, you cut in before she can speak. “Look, I’ll buy your little story as long as _you_ buy me dinner. Hopping halfway across a galaxy always leaves me _starved_.”

 

=

 

Instead of the chow hall, she takes you to her hiveblock. It isn’t just nice, it is _stylish as hell_. Ambient lighting, plush blue rugs, a coon big enough for three burly rustbloods--the place even has leveled floors to separate the blocks without using walls. Must be a lot of perks to being the highblood on starship!

You immediately make a lewd joke that turns her cheeks blue--the _same_ blue as her uniform, the _same_ blue as your blood--but she quickly changes the topic. “You _do_ realize what effect you’re having on the crew, don’t you?”

“If this is about my vestigial glands I swear to god--“

“No, you idiot!” She gasps, and covers her mouth like she just cursed the Condesce’s name. She does her best to talk over your laughter. “Just--has it _occurred_ to you and I look quite similar?”

“Hardly! I am obviously much sexier than you.”

“Oh, _obviously_ ,” she says through her fangs like you just stepped on her bulge. “But it’s undeniable that we _do_ share many similar physical characteristics--“

“Ooh, are these real?” You admire a stretch of curtained wall on which several chainsaws of varying sizes are displayed, reflecting the soft light on well-polished teeth.

“If you _please_ ,” she huffs when you draw your hand down a guide bar, “the power tools of a surgetactician are not to be touched by _civilians_.”

“Okay, easy babe, my bad!” You back off, hands up defensively. Guess the jokes about a girl and her chainsaw _are_ true. “Tell me you’ve got some grub I can eat, Serket, otherwise I’m gonna cartwheel to the chow hall, just _watch_ me.” 

“Vriska, would you--“ She follows after you as you stride up the metal stairs to the cookeryblock and gleefully crack the thermal hull open.

“Are those spicy beetle legs? Is that _beer?_ ” Okay, chick’s a bitch but she’s got the same taste in junk food as you do, so she’s an _awesome_ bitch at least. There’s a small green bottle of something clear on the counter, and you grab that too because hell, gotta imbibe when the booze is free, right? Arms full, you kick the thermal door shut and drop your haul onto the counter. “You earned some points back,” you say matter-of-factly through a mouthful of leg.

She shakes her head. Behind closed doors, her shoulders slump despite the (admittedly badass) shoulder pads of her crisply starched uniform. “Never mind. Now, if you _please_ , could you stop interrupting me? I need to-- _we_ need to figure out a plan here, too many people have already seen you and I don’t even know how to _begin_ attempting to untangle this madness let alone--“

You hold up your roboarm and, miraculously, she shuts up. “Twenty caegars say we’re genetically identical. I ain’t ever heard of that happening before. Personally, I think this is potentially the start of something really excellent, but only if you _quit blowing a gasket_. Barely _anybody_ saw me walking around and ain’t nobody gonna remember in a night or two, especially if you _don’t_ make a big deal over it.” You crack the big green cap off the counter bottle and take long, thirsty gulps. Fruity flavored beer? Wow, minus eight million points for the rest of forever. “So sit your glutes down, have a beer, and _chill_.”

She sighs, all long-suffering and dramatic as fuck. “I can’t drink, I’m on _duty_.”

“That’s no excuse!”

“It’s a perfectly good excu-- _reason_ to not drink!” She huffs again and shuts up. You watch her fiddle with her glasses, wipe the lenses clean with her bell-shaped coat sleeve. The teardrop shape of the white frame makes you think of Terezi, which makes you inexplicably mad, so you finish off your shit-awful fruity beer and snap the cap off a second. “Alright,” she says once her glasses are back on her face, “Let’s try this again, shall we?”

You shrug.

Excellent!” All smiles again. It is _weird_ to see your own mouth so cheery. “I neglected to ask this earlier, what did Bauilus tell you of Lord Ampora’s status?”

“That his bulge has an aftertaste exactly like salmon?”

She looks at you with a dawning sort of wonder. “You’re _trying_ to be horrible.”

“Look at you catching on!” You give her a thumbs up. Grade A bitch gets an A for effort. “But okay, yeah, all I got out of the relay was that Eridan was being a prissy little bitch about receiving treatment and you need me here to okay it?”

“Yes. Ordinarily a simple biosignature from one of the patient’s emergency contacts sent through the data feed is sufficient, but for someone of Lord Ampora’s caste and status as Trierarchorphaner…” She spreads her hands. “We needed you present in case of any, ah, _incidents_.”

“Alright, cool. What do you need me to do?”

Aranea grimaces before she lies. “He is adamantly refusing treatment, and--to be perfectly honest--“ When people say that they may as well just say they’ve been lying all damn night, seriously, “--I don’t know how he’s still capable of even that much. He was in an unspecified altercation that left him completely bisected at the waist, but despite incredible blood loss remains quite lucid. He’s in minimal pain and has even been flirting with several members of my staff. To borrow a word from the Church, Lord Ampora’s continued existence is a miracle.”

“Bet hearing that’s got him stroking his bulge all the live-long night,” you stutter through a wide yawn. Your fussy fanged twin frowns.

“Am I _boring_ you?” she asks, disapproving as schoolfeeder--which makes sense actually, when you think about it.

“No- _oooooooo_ ,” you yawn again. Jeez, why’re you so tired all of a sudden?

“Right. As I was saying, you can’t visit him right now but in the meantime there are quite a number of documents I’ll need you to fill out. Obviously it would be in our best interest if you stayed out of sight as much as possible bluh bluh do we?--I’ll bluh bluh and while you do that I’m bluh bluh slight mishap bluh bluh. Can I trust you to--Vriska?”

“Whuzzah?” Oh, did you doze off? Did…have you? What? God, you’re tired…

You blink and Aranea is standing next to you, reaching for the bottle you finished. “Oh my _god_ , did you not read the label before chugging this?”

“…huh?”

“You just drank an _entire bottle_ of sleeping agent!” She groans and slams the bottle down on the table. “We need to get your digestive sac pumped.”

“Hey Serket.” You draw out each syllable of your shared hatchname, long R, long E, and enjoy the flinch that runs all the way down her spine. “What’s…what’s your lusus?”

She stares at you, fangs-- _your_ fangs, maybe a few shades whiter, but your fangs all the same--bared in confusion. “I don’t see how that has anything to do with--“

“C’mon, what’s it? Mine was…spi-spiderkind. _Huuuuuuuuge_ bitch.” You try to sit up but your arms are all wobbly, so you just lay your head down again and grin a little stupidly. “Filled th’ whole fuckin’ canyon by my hive…had to--put her down though. She--I acci--accid--she blew up. She blew up, and I had to kill her.”

“Oh,” is all you hear Aranea say before your palpebral flaps shutter and refuse to open again.

 

=

 

You know you’re dreaming when you’re soaked in cobalt blood. Only body with this much to lose in your shade is-- _was_ \--your lusus, and you only ever killed her the once.

Sitting on your heels, palms grinding into the wet dirt, you are six sweeps old and very, very tired. The air reeks of death: charred metal, charred carapace, charred rock. Bits of your shitty doomsday device are imbedded in everything, including your custodian’s meat. The smell of it all makes you two-parts nauseous and one-parts hungry.

When you decapitate a troll, the head remains alive for eight seconds. When you decapitate a cockroach, it is much more likely the head will starve to death before the brain dies. Spiderkind leans more towards trolls in this aspect, but it is still long, ugly minutes before her massive fangs stop grinding, longer still for her legs to cease twitching.

You fucking hate your daymares.

Footsteps behind you change the game--nothing _ever_ changes in this dream-memory--and you have your dice out and rolled without bothering to turn around. You ain’t in the mood to watch some stupid wiggler bleed out, dream or not.

But there’s silence, and that’s what makes you look round your shoulder.

 Down on your knees, your horntips don’t even reach Mindfang’s waist.

“Holy shit,” you manage after a long minute of staring up at her stupidly.

The clack of your dice--her dice?--between her metal fingers is loud, louder than the drip of cobalt viscera. “Hello, Vriska,” she says with a smile that makes ice run down your spine.

“I’ve never dreamed about you before,” you say all in a rush as you ease to your feet. The blood of your custodian is forgotten; you barely feel the weight of it pull on your soaking clothes. You are utterly captivated by the sharp cut of her coat, the plunging neckline that reveals more gland than you ever thought your stringy body was capable of. You are amazed by how the black-and-blue fabric stretches over her hourglass hips. One sleeve is raggedly torn off to flaunt her prosthetic arm just as you do to all your jackets, but on her it looks _incredible_ while on you it’s always been a step above _trashy_. Her tricorne with its sleek blue feather is set at an angle between her long, long horns that screams _dangerous_ , and you can’t--stop-- _staring_.

In short, your ancestor _is hot as fuck_.

“That’s because you aren’t dreaming about me now.” She juts out one hip, places a hand on its curve. You do this too, but when she does it, it's is _all_ kinds of sexy. “I invited myself in.”

When she says this, the back of your traitorous pan supplies a genuinely _awful_ porno track. You want to tear your horns off and stab yourself in the oculars from the images that spring to mind. Instead you clear your throat and do your best not to sound like a dipshit. “How did you do that?”

“Oh, my descendent, don’t tell me you think your mind is so guarded as to keep _me_ out?” With one claw she taps your temple. “And let me just say, dear Vriska, what a tangled web it is up there!”

You blush. You can’t help it. She is just so tall and razor-sharp and _perfect._ She is the sum of all your wigglerhood dreams, and she outstrips your imagination by _light years_. “Marquise--“ you say, and your blood pusher hiccups when she nods, pleased. “This isn’t a dream, is it? Not really. What--what is this?”

She extends her prosthetic hand to you, and you reverently take it with yours. You may as well be holding the hand of God. She kneels so that she may be closer to eye-level with you. “It’s good to see you pick up faster than Aranea on this sort of thing. Perhaps there is hope yet? Yes,” she nods again, affirming something unknown to you. “Yes, dear Vriska, there is hope. Do you trust me?”

You are incapable of saying anything. You can only stare into her eyes: one cobalt blue, one molten red. She is beautiful, so much more beautiful than anyone you have ever seen.

Her smile is white sunlight, bright enough to burn. “Vriska, do you remember how you died?”

And her eyes bleach paper white, _ghost_ white, and when you scream out dismay blood sprays from your mouth, and there is _pain_. Pain digs its claws all the way down through your meat, through your _bones_ , and splinters brightest in your chest, fresh and old all at once, a memory of death--

 

_Just flip the fucking coin, Neophyte._

\--and your ancestor smiles when you whisper, clinging to her arm like a lifeline, “I remember.”

 

=

 

Vriska Serket is a brash, bombastic, and blatantly terrible example of a blueblooded troll. She is nothing like you; she is everything you aren’t.

Two different ways of saying it, but only one of them makes you feel good about yourself.

Regardless, _you_ have the common sense to tell the difference between cheap alcohol and a bottle of mediship-grade sleeping agent. Luckily for her, she is _on_ a mediship and so doesn’t need to worry about dying at a meager thirty sweeps. You ordered the gastroenterothrasher to never breathe a word of Vriska’s existence to anyone on pain of culling--there are, admittedly, some perks to being the highblood on ship.

When Vriska wakes up you’ll tell her Lord Ampora has gone missing. But while she rests, as luck would have it, you find yourself with plenty of time to--ah, _gather information_.

 If you had to hazard a guess as to how the Reconciliarse was constructed, you would say that after a satisfying career as a crash test starship, it was retired in a fantastic display of cinematic explosions. The resulting catastrophic fires seemed to have been doused messily with gobs of brown and blue paint. It is an absolute disaster, and extraordinary because it can still fly at all.

As you walk up the ship’s curved airstairs you can’t help but eye its pitted skin, run through with the silvery veins of patch jobs. It is a suspiciously battered starship for a cartograbutcher. No doubt Vriska does a bit more than chart maps for the glory of the Alternian Empire. Whether or not these shady dealings are worth any caegars is no business of yours, as long as she doesn’t have anything illegal onboard. However, you are starting to suspect _Vriska_ and _rules_ do not see eye to eye.

The external door hisses shut, and it takes a moment for your eyes to adjust. When they do you wish they hadn’t, as the interior is not much better than the exterior. At least the exterior did not have well-thumbed issues of _Dongles Monthly_ and blue underwear draped all over everything. But you didn’t come here to critique Vriska Serket’s--and to call someone else by your symbol name is so strange!--interior decorating. You have questions Vriska is too unconscious and too recalcitrant to answer, and you know where you can find the answers you want--if you push the right buttons.

“Helmsman, are you awake?”

Speakers haphazardly bolted to the ceiling fizzle on. “Yes.”

“Where is your bridge located?”

The speakers crackle with breathless laughter, a little bit nasally, a little bit bemused. “You should be dead.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, sorry, that sounded, like a threat, didn’t it? It wasn’t meant to be. I am, just stating a fact, here, that is pretty inarguable, or at least it was, inarguable, until--well--“ Helmsman Reconciliarse laughs again, “You continued to be, very much alive.”

“Clarify.”

“Vriska always booby-traps me, when she leaves, with a lethal blood agent capable of, of killing most trolls within a minute. It has taken three, uh, minutes before, but that guy was indigoblooded, and also nine feet tall. He was also, kind of an asshole.”

“…I see. Can I assume this agent was not triggered when I entered?”

“Yeah, uh, you’re safe. It’s just, funny.” It chuckles to itself a third time. “It only triggers when somebody, not matching Vriska’s bioscan enters alone without, her consent forwarded to me. You--you didn’t get Vriska’s consent, did you?”

You take great care in ignoring the cold twist of your digestive sac. “Helmsman, where is your bridge located?”

“Oh, right. There are some stairs, through the door on, your left.”

Helmsman Reconciliarse hums while you ascend; it is breathtakingly off-key. When you reach the top of the cramped spiral staircase it directs you through one more door and then your eyes are assailed by blue-- _your_ blue, and you don’t need to compare the stitching on your uniform to the wetware to be sure of that.

“Hello,” says the helmsman, a black and brown pillar in the expanse of gently wriggling blue, and then, “Wow uh, you look just like Vriska, if, she had never been, blown up I mean.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

The helmsman belonging to Vriska Serket is a male rustblood with horns both long and tall, and for having spent more than half his life as the battery of a junked starship he still retains a brownblood’s easy muscle definition. There is a plain gold band on a silver chain around his thick neck, but neither that nor the echoingly familiar symbol on his broad chest hold your attention. What is curious about this helmsman is not his horns, not his grown-out mohawk, not even the seven-pupiled metal neural feed fitted over one rich brown eye--it is his smile.

You have never seen such an enigmatically smug helmsman in your life.

“Helmsman--“

“Tavros.”

“What?”

It--he?--shrugs as best as one can with his arms stretched tightly above his shoulders. “My name is Tavros Nitram and, I would appreciate you using it--only, that is, if you don’t mind.”

“Uh, yes. Yes of course, Tavros.” His smile widens a little crookedly, and it is equal parts unnerving and endearing. You have no recollection of any helmsman keeping its hatchname--at least, outside of bad audiovisual dramas and the old Starship Pals books you used to read when you were still planetside. You never bothered keeping up to date on Helmsman regulations--that’s work for the mechaviscerators--but you always assumed they weren’t _allowed_ to.

Hmm. Vriska and rules again.

“Thank you,” Tavros says. “What’s your name?”

“I--Aranea. Aranea Serket.”

He chuckles again. You decide it’s become more than a little annoying. “You know, that doesn’t surprise me at all.”

“What does that--“

“So,” he interrupts, airy as anything as he speaks over you, “I bet you’ve got a whole _bunch_ of questions, am I right? Go on then, if you’d like. I’m not doing anything--anything important, I mean.”

You take a second to blink at him a little stupidly. The sheer flippancy, the not-so-subtle arrogance in his voice--this pilot just doesn’t _act_ like any helmsman should. He is strange, and yet the echo of familiarity remains just as it did when you laid oculars on Lord Ampora, and again with Vriska. As then, you do your best to ignore it. “Alright, Tavros. Tell me about Vriska.”

He doesn’t chuckle. He just about _collapses_  into himself with the giggles, and his many brown-veined coils bob with him. “Wow,” he gasps eventually, “That--that is a _really_ loaded question.”

“All the same,” you reply, pursing your lips, “I want to know.”

“Okay, I--“ He titters. He actually _titters_. “Right. Yes. Sorry.” He tries again. “Vriska is--Vriska is my Captain, for one thing, and she is very good at her job despite, all her scars as well as, the recent damage to my hull. She is really lucky and really intelligent, not to mention, vicious when she needs to be and, oftentimes when she doesn’t need to be. She gets what she wants, but not, necessarily, what she needs, but I bet you already knew that, just from talking to her. She and Eridan aren’t very good for each other, but they’re both really stubborn so, I guess that’s that, for now. She doesn’t have a moirail or an auspistice, but I like to think, I make a really great matesprit so I say _nuts to that_ \--“

You groan inwardly. It seems you weren’t the only Serket to read Starship Pals as a wiggler.

“--Vriska is also very good at deluding, herself, when she wants to, but I don’t mind so much. It’s fun, being a starship.”

That last bit makes no sense to you, but you have already concluded this is ship that’s had a few too many hits to its reactor core, so you pay it no mind. “When did she become your captain?”

“Oh, we were both ten still, I think? She dropped out of school and I--well, I never actually went.” He shrugs, and continues when you open your mouth to ask. “See--Vriska and I were, well, not _friends_ really, but we FLARPed together, on opposing teams, when we were young. She’s always been a strong psychic, but, I bet you knew _that_ , too.” There’s that sly grin again, the sort that people with hands often tap the side of their noses when they smiled like that. “She controlled me off a cliff, and after that I had to use a four wheel device. I couldn’t afford prosthetics, being so low on the hemospectrum, so when it was time for Ascension I, was lucky enough to have friends in high places that, could hide me away.”

“Who hid you?”

“It, doesn’t matter. But, when Vriska dropped out, she needed a ship and, being a blueblood she could, pay for a helmsman and a starter ship easily enough. But instead of some stranger to steer her, she--she asked me to.”

“That was a bit callous of her, wasn’t it?”

“Ha, yeah, but you’ve met her. Vriska isn’t really the, go-to troll for tact.”

You grimace. “No, no she isn’t.”

“She’s been gone for a while. Did she, regale you with fantastic tales about her ancestor? She does that, a lot, to strangers.”

Ah. Yes. “Well-- _no_ , there wasn’t any of that. She was a bit too busy emptying my cookeryblock of anything edible, to include a nearly full bottle of sleeping agent.” You adjust your cuffs so as not to look him in the ocular. “Don’t worry. I’m having someone care for her as we speak. She’ll be fine.”

“Wow.” He shakes his head.

“Her ancestor--“ you laugh, weakly. Tonight has not been kind to you. “This is probably a silly question, but was it--?”

“Yep, same as yours.” Déjà vu. Your pan hisses, and you don’t ask how he knew yours.

“Why are you laughing?”

His grin is rueful, sheepish, but not apologetic. “I might have lied to you, a little. About why I didn’t Ascend. It’s, kind of a funny story.”

A shiver runs down you. “And why didn’t you Ascend, Tavros?”

“I’ll give you a clue. Your ancestor thought my ancestor had, a great butt.”

It takes you a few seconds to both avoid _that_ mental image and put together what he’s implying. “ _No_.”

The wetware cascading down the rounded wall behind him parts like a damp curtain, revealing _wings_. Brown, massive, gently flitting _wings_. “In Alternian law,” he says calm as anything, while you can’t stop staring at brown veins threading through blinking scales, “wings are a culling sentence, so Vriska, saved me. And, like I said, it’s pretty fun, being a starship.”

“Oh,” you say, dizzy for unknown reasons, and that’s when Vriska appears with a little _pop_ of displaced air right in front of you. Understandably, you are very startled and have every right to draw your weapon. Twenty sweeps in the surgetactician field, you still prefer the Fluorite Octet every time.

In the same movement you make, Vriska draws the Octet too.

“Well, isn’t this a little embarrassing?” Heels clack sharply behind you on the steel grating, and you freeze, because you have only ever heard that voice in your _dreams_ \--

“You’re not dreaming,” Vriska says reassuringly, “Not really.” Gone is her atrocious leather jacket, gone are her piercings and horn modifications, gone is her prosthetic arm and gambligant eye patch. She is smooth-skinned and young, clean but for a little blue makeup. She’s dressed all in yellow and orange, and _blue wings_ flutter at her back.

Your ancestor touches your shoulder without a hint of claw, and gently turns you around to face her. In her metal hand a third set of the Octet float in a gentle spiral. “Hello again, Aranea,” she says, and her smile is the same sort of gloating baring of teeth as Tavros’, except Tavros makes you a little nervous and Mindfang makes you  want to kneel down and swear fealty right here and now before she beheads you.

Behind you is the distinct sound of redrom kisses, and you are very glad to not be looking that way all of a sudden.

“I don’t understand.” You swallow. “I’m so--none of this makes any _sense_!”

Mindfang nods sagely. “Dreams so rarely do. For instance, how is it two of my blood have the capacity for a delusion strong enough to convince them more than _twenty sweeps_ have passed since they did not die? Especially _you_ , Aranea. With all your time in the dream bubbles I would have expected--oh, _better_ from you.”

And that’s it. Those two magic words-- _dream bubble_ \--break the spell. The Reconciliarse vanishes. Tavros’ wetware vanishes. Your high-necked surgetactician uniform is replaced with yellow and orange too. The weight pulling on your shoulder blades is as familiar as the back of your hand.You--you _remember_.

“Oh my _god_ ,” you groan, “I’m afraid to ask how much time we wasted.”

“Hardly any,” says your--no, says _yourself from an alternate universe_. “Only a few nights.”

Vriska walks up next to you, wiping off matesprit smoochspit. “Time is a bit funny out here.”

“ _Yes I know!_ ” You are embarrassed--no, you are _mortified_. Mindfang has every right to be disappointed because you let yourself get caught up in the cyclical nature of dream bubbles long enough to actually _grow up_. For Vriska, Tavros--and perhaps Eridan as well--it is forgiveable, but you? That hasn’t happened to you in--god, _centuries_.

“Well!” Mindfang slips her dice away, and her eyes are white as anything. “Now that I’ve gotten the pair of you to pull your horns out of your nooks it’s time I left. There’s only so much interference I feel comfortable doing out here.” She looks at Vriska solemnly. “All the noise you’ve been making has drawn his attention, as you planned. He’s coming for this bubble, and if you wish to remain the alpha timeline iterations of yourselves, I highly suggest you clear out, and clear out _quickly_.”

“Oh,” says Vriska. And, “Fuck!”

“Wow,” Tavros agrees, rubbing his wrists gingerly. “Yeah, we need to, get out of here. I would very much like to remain a ghost, instead of, a double-dead troll.”

“No shit, dumbass!” She elbows him the gut. He wheezes despite no longer having any need of his aerating sacs. “Come on, boring teen Mindfang, we gotta jet!”

You hear Tavros ask if it’s alright if he keeps his wings. Vriska says she’ll think about it. They fade into the encroaching darkness.

You look at Mindfang--yourself--oh, _whatever_. There are too many Serkets in the same place. It’s becoming confusing, and more than a little absurd.

“Did you arrange all this? I mean, with Eridan and everything. Was this all you?”

She laughs, low and smoky. “Of course it was! Don’t tell me you think that spineless little shrimp was clever enough to fashion all this?”

“No! Of course not. It’s just--th--thank you,” you say. “ _Really_. I don’t think we would have ever noticed anything was strange at all if you hadn’t shoved us in each other’s faces.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t thank me just yet, Aranea.” Her lips are a grim line, yet they still twitch when she says your name, like she’s in on some joke that you can never hope to grasp. “My time is over, but the road is still stretched long before you children. I don’t envy you. Then again, Gl'bgolyb’s ghost actually _does_ reside in this bubble, so perhaps we can all be thankful for something once she’s gone.”

She waves, a dismissive little  _goodbye, darling_ , turns on her heel, and slips away in the blink of an ocular.

You sigh. Are you the only Serket with any manners?

You leave the lights on when you leave.

 

**Author's Note:**

>  _Dongles Monthly_ is [Roadch Petrel's](http://roachpatrol.tumblr.com/tagged/roadch-petrel) choice of skin mag.
> 
> Starship Pals is [Roach's idea too](http://archiveofourown.org/works/282279), shit.
> 
> Credit also goes to [VastDerp](http://archiveofourown.org/users/VastDerp/pseuds/VastDerp), be it for the Ancestor-bubble schtick, the brownblooded helmsmen idea, or the concept of getting stuck in your own memories to the point of forgetting you ever died. Something like that. I know others have done it, probably also before him, but he's where I saw it first done (and done _right_ ).
> 
> Pretty sure I'm the first person to put Tavros "Do you even lift?" Nitram in the wetware though.


End file.
